Nova Bus is recalling 928 transit buses in the United States because a coolant-level sensor can send a false low-coolant signal and shut the engine down while the bus is moving. The recall covers 2022 through 2024 Nova Bus LFS buses and 2023 and 2024 LFS Artic articulated buses, according to a weekly NHTSA recall digest published by trade publication Trucks, Parts, Service. A parallel recall filed with Transport Canada, numbered 2026424, describes the identical defect on the same model years north of the border.
An engine that cuts out mid-route does more than strand a bus. Transit agencies running the LFS and LFS Artic now have a defined population of vehicles to check, and the fix does not require a new part so much as a correct one, since the existing sensor is being inspected and swapped rather than redesigned.
A false reading, not a real coolant problem
Trucks, Parts, Service reported that “the coolant sensor could send a false signal, causing the engine to shut down.” Transport Canada’s own recall record for the same defect is more specific about the mechanism, describing an “engine coolant level sensor” that “may be defective and could falsely detect a low level of coolant,” triggering a shutdown even though the bus’s cooling system is not actually low. The engine is not overheating and is not being protected from a real fault; it is responding to bad data from a single sensor.
The safety risk NHTSA and Transport Canada both flag is twofold. “An unexpected engine shut down can increase the risk of a crash,” the recall documentation states, and it adds a second hazard specific to transit service: “transferring passengers from the disabled bus can increase the risk of injury.” A city bus that loses power in traffic has to get every rider off safely, often at a stop the vehicle was not scheduled to make.
Two model lines, one shared coolant sensor
The recalled fleet spans a three-year production window across two body styles Nova Bus builds on the same LFS platform: the standard 40-foot LFS, produced across the 2022 through 2024 model years, and the longer LFS Artic articulated bus, covered for 2023 and 2024. Both configurations draw on the same engine cooling architecture, which is why a single sensor defect reaches across both body styles rather than being confined to one.
This is not the first time Nova Bus has flagged a coolant-sensor problem on the LFS line. An earlier Transport Canada recall, numbered 2025513, covered 2022 and 2023 LFS and LFS Artic buses for what Transport Canada described as the same falsely-triggered low-coolant condition. The new recall, filed as 2026424, explicitly supersedes that earlier action and widens the affected model years, and it specifies that buses already repaired once under the 2025 recall still need the newer fix.
A related U.S. recall filing, NHTSA report 24V-873, traced an earlier version of the same problem to a supplier part: a Casco Products Corp. coolant sensor built with a “misalignment of the internal sensor probes,” which caused the sensor to register a critical-low coolant warning that was not real. Nova Bus has not said publicly whether the sensors in the newly recalled 2023 and 2024 buses share that exact supplier defect or a related one, but the failure mode described in both cases is identical: a bad reading, not a real coolant loss, shutting the engine down.
What transit operators are being told to do
Nova Bus is notifying owners — almost all of them public transit agencies rather than individual consumers — by mail with instructions for how to inspect the coolant-level sensor and replace it if the inspection finds a defective unit. Trucks, Parts, Service’s recall digest did not report a specific U.S. remedy completion deadline, and neither the trade report nor Transport Canada’s record lists a confirmed crash or injury tied to the defect so far.
For an agency running a fixed route, the practical fallout of the recall is less about the sensor itself and more about scheduling around it: 928 U.S. buses, plus however many of the Canadian fleet the parallel action covers, now need an inspection slot before the false-shutdown risk is fully retired, on top of whatever repair work those same buses were already due for under the superseded 2025 recall.
The U.S. fleet being serviced under this recall is effectively a fixed population rather than a growing one. Nova Bus’s parent, Volvo Group, closed the company’s Plattsburgh, New York, assembly plant in early 2025 after years of financial losses at the site, shifting all bus production to two Quebec facilities while continuing to service buses already sold to U.S. transit agencies. That means the 928 recalled buses represent a slice of an American LFS fleet that will not be added to by new production, even as Nova Bus keeps sending out parts and repair instructions for the buses already on U.S. streets.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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